When receiving a domain inquiry, there are three important elements to help you identify your potential buyer:
- Their name
- The email
- Their IP / locale
Assuming that the inquiry maker does not attempt to mask who they are – in which case, you’d have to extract that information – by using the details above you can get a better picture about who you’re dealing with.
As I’ve noted previously, plenty of domain inquiries these days arrive via 3rd parties that are not professional domain brokers.
When a contact expresses interest in your .com domain, always check the availability of the ccTLD domain at their country of origin.
A few days ago, an otherwise nice fella from Europe acted all “shocked” over my five figure quote on a generic .com; I responded that their lack of an ample budget could be resolved by registering their national ccTLD domain, that very minute.
As I suspected, the ccTLD remains available to this date, indicating an ulterior motive in the inquiry: it was someone else’s decision to make.
National ccTLD domains are very commonly used outside of the US, as brands, business names and corporate web sites. There is no excuse for such inquiry makers not to spend the registration fees to get their own country’s ccTLD, prior to “upgrading” to a more generic TLD.
By identifying this small detail, you can tag your domain as “red hot” and deploy your pricing strategy accordingly.
I do this all the time, you are spot on it is a good indicator. I had one last month where the guy called me from the U.K.
I took the time to educate him and told him I understood he was a student and had no budget. I told him the .co.uk was available and he should register it. He still kept talking about the .com, I said ” Look we are never going to do a deal in the hundreds of dollars, you don’t need the .com, go get your country code for 6 GBP.” Still not registered.